Responsible Gambling Messaging - Does "When The Fun Stops, Stop" Actually Help Anyone?

[FadeThePublic]

Every betting ad in the UK ends with it.

Every betting app has it somewhere in the interface.

BeGambleAware.org. When the fun stops, stop. Bet with your head not over it. Please gamble responsibly.

I want to ask an honest question that the industry doesn't want asked.

Who has these messages actually helped.

Not theoretically helped. Not in a focus group. Actually changed behavior in a real person during a real moment when they were about to make a decision that was bad for them.

Because the research on brief intervention messaging in addiction contexts is mixed at best.

And the specific population most in need of help from gambling messaging is the population most cognitively captured by the activity.

The message appears in the advertising. The advertising is designed to make you want to bet. The message telling you not to bet too much is appended to content whose entire purpose is the opposite.

Who has actually been stopped by any of this.

 

[DublinDegen]

saw those messages thousands of times over seven years...

not once did one of them change a decision i was making...

not once...

the specific thing i remember about them: they existed in a different register from whatever i was doing when i saw them...

like they were aimed at someone else...

the message says "when the fun stops, stop"...

the fun had stopped years before i stopped...

the message assumes fun is what's happening and that its absence is the signal...

for me there was no fun... there was compulsion... and compulsion doesn't respond to the message because the message isn't speaking to compulsion...

it's speaking to recreational fun that's gone slightly too far...

that person and the person i was are completely different people...

the message wasn't written for me...